There are more than a few bad apps

Saturday

May 15, 2010 at 8:00 AM

RENE A. GUZMANSan Antonio Express-News

As editor of an iPhone application review website called KRAPPS.com, Alex Miro has covered more than his share of outrageous and outright suspicious apps.Take, for example, the controversial Baby Shaker. This app encouraged users to shake the iPhone until an onscreen illustration of a baby ended up with red X’s over its eyes.And then there was Wart Healer, which asked you to upload a photo of your wart to a long-distance mental healer to magically remove it for $13.Miro wrote about both apps and they soon disappeared from Apple’s App Store.Yet dubious apps remain available for the curious and, yes, the gullible.“(App reviewers at Apple are) just getting so many apps submitted for approval at once I just don’t think they have the manpower to properly look at them,” Miro says.Apple did not comment for this story. However, its iPhone Dev Center (via developer.apple.com) notes 94 percent of new apps submitted were reviewed within the last 7 days, based on a last update of April 20. The App Store has more than 200,000 apps.Miro says app users should always read an app’s fine print before they download. Nonetheless, he says most consumers too often rely on Apple as their sole watchdog.Here are a few iPhone apps you might want to watch out for, if only because they could be used for ill will.

STAGLER (free)Not only does the app’s name sound like the word “stalker,” but that’s what it is, locating your Facebook friends on your iPhone via a map or location-based stream. Click that friend and up pops their history. The app also culls locations from Twitter and Foursquare and uses push notifications to alert you when your friends are nearby. Meanwhile, Stalqer lets you control who sees you and to what extent. About the only thing it doesn’t do is root through a person’s garbage.

CALLREC.ME (free)Records incoming and outgoing calls, so users can keep conversations for posterity — or blackmail? “I could see scenarios where you were trying to turn one person against another and then say, ‘Hey, listen to this,’” says Dr.Harvey Castro, a contributor to iPhone Life magazine who’s also a Dallas emergency room physician and owner of an iPhone app developing company.Many states (including Texas) don’t require you to inform the person on the other end that you’re recording the call, but it’s nice to know upfront that what you say could be used against you. Though CallRec.me users will likely have to pay to get that dirt on record. The app records only up to 2 minutes free; longer recordings will set you back $9.99 for up too 200 minutes U.S. or 30 minutes worldwide.

DRIVERS LICENSE (free)Lets you craft a faux driver’s license for any state. Snap your picture with your iPhone and paste it right in along with any pertinent personal info.For “recreational purposes only,“ of course.John Painter didn’t find it funny. Even though the license templates have an obvious DriversEd.com (the app’s publisher) logo on them, Painter says he altered his creation with another app to produce what he considered “a very real looking“ Maine driver’s license.“If I could crank out an ID and have it laminated in less then half an hour with just an iPhone, color printer, cardstock and laminate enclosure from Staples what do you think anyone looking to take your identity could do, or anyone looking to get extra prescription drugs,“ says Painter, another iPhone Life contributor, via e-mail.

PUFF, PUFF PASS ($1.99)Lets you simulate a bunch of cartoon smokers engaged in “a real live smoke session.“ Choose from a pipe, cigar or cigarette, take a puff and pass it on to the next dweeby dude or busty babe character. Joe Camel would be so proud.Miro wonders why Apple would green-light an app that turns tobacco use into a game. Then there’s the question of whether or not the app is really about legal smoking.“Anyone with half a clue in life should clearly realize that Puff Puff Pass is SCREAMING in drug use innuendo,“ Miro says at KRAPPS.com, noting the app shares the same name as the film “Puff, Puff, Pass“ about two marijuana users who get tired of rehab.

FATBURNER2K ($.99)This app claims to “help your body consume fat molecules using disharmonic, molecule to molecule, physical oscillations, which is a sciency way of saying that FatBurner2K shakes the fat in your body until it gives up.“ Yep, the app just makes your iPhone vibrate against your gut. Miro warns that even though the developers wrote on their blog that it’s a joke, the app description doesn’t say it’s for entertainment purposes only.

BLOWER ($.99)Need some extra wind power to blow out the birthday candles or just keep cool? The Blower app uses the iPhone’s speaker opening to deliver an airy assist if you crank up the volume. But Miro points out that means a lot of stress on your iPhone. As for the breeze you do get, Miro likens it to “an ant farting.“ In other words, not even a lot of hot air.